Wood Connection: Child Artwork Display

I've been doing pre-school a couple days a week with my 2 year old daughter. We've been doing a lot of art projects about the alphabet. I wanted to display some of her artwork and have been taping them up on the wall. But since tape isn't the prettiest thing, I decided to make this cute display instead! I thought the word CREATE was the perfect description to hang above all of her artwork. 

Here is what I did:

Materials:

- Letters C, R, E, A, T, E

- 6 5x7 plaques

- 4 scrapbook papers

- 15+ clothespins

- Paint: Seafoam, Metallic Gold, Navy Blue, Think Pink

- Stain: Provincial

- 6 wooden knobs (found at home depot)

- Mirror Cord (home depot)

- sand paper

- paint brushes

- wood glue

- sawtooth hangers (for hanging letters)

Let's start with the letters. I sanded all of them first. 

The C: I painted Sea Foam paint and gave it 2 coats. 

The R: I painted on the stain and then wiped it off with a paper towel. 

The first E: I painted the edges white and then traced the scrapbook paper, cut it out and glued it to the letter using wood glue (see a tutorial here). 

The A: I painted it with the Metallic Gold paint (2 coats). 

The T: I painted the edges using Think Pink and then applied the striped scrapbook paper on top. 

The E: I painted Navy Blue.

Now for the plaques...

1. I painted this plaque Think Pink

2. I painted the edges white and glued on the multicolored arrow paper on top.

3. This plaque has the edges white and Ruler Paper

4. I painted the gold edges first (I used a small paint brush to get the small edges) and then painted the top white.

5. I painted the plaque navy blue. Then using a circle sponge paint brush that I bought at WalMart to paint the gold circles on it.

6. This plaque has Seafoam edges on it with the green circle paper on top.

Next, I stained all the clothespins and knobs. Instead of painting on the stain onto each clothespin, I put stain in a bowl and dipped the clothespins in. Then I wiped each one off with a rag or paper towel. With the knobs, I painted the stain on then wiped off with a towel.

Instead of screwing the knobs onto the plaque, I just used wood glue to attach them. I knew I wasn't going to hang anything to heavy from these so using glue was a lot easier than screwing them in.

Also I attached the small sawtooth hangers onto the back of each letter.

Next it was time to hang! I had my husband do this. Then I attached the wire to the knobs. I had to use a little sticky tack stuff for the back of the plaques so they didn't move. 

Then I found some cute artwork that my 2 year old did and hung it up! She loves it and so do I!